The Morning Heresy is your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.

We don't take too kindly to religious bigotry or faith-based tests, especially when it comes to people in desperate need. Our official statement on the fearmongering now rampant over the Syrian refugees: "As secular humanists we insist: These refugees are us, and we are them, whatever their religion might be."

When I hear folks say that, well, maybe we should just admit the Christians but not the Muslims, when I hear political leaders suggesting that there would be a religious test for which person who’s fleeing from a war-torn country is admitted, when some of those folks themselves come from families who benefited from protection when they were fleeing political persecution, that’s shameful. That’s not who we are. We don’t have religious tests to our compassion.

The Morning Heresy is your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.

Religion News Service publishes an op-ed by me on the Bangladesh crisis, and how religious groups ought to join us in trying to stop the killings, that is if they sincerely care about a literally mortal threat to religious freedom (and Washington Post is also running it):

We in the American secular humanist community are doing all we can to save lives and change the course of events in Bangladesh, from the grass roots to the halls of American and international diplomatic power. We have done the same in the past, passionately and proudly, when conservative Christian groups asked for help supporting their fellow believers, like Asia Bibi in Pakistan and Meriam Ibrahim in Sudan. But we can only do so much. Our resources and reach are limited, and frankly dwarfed by those of American churches and conservative Christian organizations. So we’re asking for their help.

In Bangladesh, the prime minister continues not-helping, saying, "I belong to a religion and I would be upset if someone offended my sentiments by writing something obscene or preposterous. ... There will be a similar reaction from Hindus, Buddhists or Christians, if someone hurts their religious beliefs." To which several leading activists in the country say, "Instead of bringing the killers to justice, the government high-ups have suggested that writers show restraint. Writing seems to have become a crime bigger than murder. This is completely unacceptable."

Holy moly. Forget alien megastructures. New data from the European Space Agency’s Planck telescope might have revealed "an eerie glow that could be due to matter from a neighbouring universe [complete with "different physics"] leaking into ours." Of course, it could also just be dust. But still!

Dan Vergaro at BuzzFeed reports on the potential for greater scrutiny of homeopathy from the FDA, with commentary from our own Michael De Dora: "They are on the shelves next to real medicine, they look like real medicine, and there is a lot evidence that people don’t know what they are buying."

There is an urgent need for a concerted response to prevent more killings by promptly bringing the perpetrators to justice, and by taking effective measures to protect writers, publishers and any other people in Bangladesh who are being threatened with violence. The State must not allow extremist groups to take matters into their own hands.